Day: September 5, 2018

Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov has been on hunger strike for 115 days in the Polar Bear Maximum Security Prison Camp in Labytnangi, Russia, where he has been serving a twenty-year sentence on trumped-up charges of “terrorism.”

Mr. Sentsov’s only crime was that he opposed the occupation of his native Crimea by neo-imperialist Russia.

Mr. Sentsov’s only demand is that Russian authorities release sixty-four other Ukrainian political prisoners they have incarcerated during their illegal war against Ukraine.

It’s impossible for non-Russians to live in the Russian Federation. They should leave the country. I know it’s complicated, but it’s more complicated than burying your children or having to nurse them back to health like this.

I know from my own experience. I’ve heard my fill of stories.

The harder life becomes in Russia, the tougher people will be on non-Russians. The blame here lies not with young, uneducated morons from troubled families, but with the ideologues of neo-Nazism and nationalism. And maybe the Kremlin will pick up the topic again when it needs to look for “enemies.”

Just don’t tell me the Soviet Union was a friendship of peoples. A friendship of people, sure, but the peoples were always pitted against each other.

My nephew was beaten up on Sunday evening, just for the heck of it. Or, rather, not just for the heck of it, but because of his narrow eyes and the color of his skin. We spent all night at the hospital. The examination was brief, but the doctors said they had to wait another two to four days to be sure of the final diagnosis. My nephew’s left eye hurts, and he cannot open it. You can see for yourself.

Something similar happened to another nephew of mine around fifteen years ago, when he was in his sixth year at the Sechenov Medical Academy in Moscow. We had been returning from a concert by the beloved People’s Artist and singer Lyudmila Zykina, a concert to which she had invited us.

We took different trains in the subway. The boy was dozing in the train, his eyes half closed, when suddenly a boot smashed into his face with savage force. Although my nephew was a boxer, there was nothing he could do against a two-meter-tall, thickheaded lout. The result was a broken jaw, being fed through a tube for three months, and having to prepare for his thesis defense. The boy lost forty kilos.

How are non-Russians supposed to go on living?

Photo courtesy of Elena Zaharova and Svetlana Choyzhinimayeva. Translated by the Russian Reader